"There are no atheists in the foxholes" (1942)

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

> I heard this phrase just now on a cable news network. The Yale Book of
> Quotations credits William Thomas Cummings, an American priest, from Carlos R.
> Romulo, _I Saw the Fall of the Philippines_ (1943).

The mistake I made with that citation is that Romulo's book was actually
published in 1942, not 1943.

> 20 April 1942, Albuquerque (NM) Journal, pg. 4, col. 3:
> quite  casually, "we did. There are no atheists in the fox holes of Bataan."

Note that last year Bonnie Taylor-Blake posted citations for this
quotation from 13 April 1942.  She also pointed out very similar
formulations from 1917 and 1918 newspapers.

Fred Shapiro


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